“Not that everything is being interpreted, but everything assumes interpretation.”1. – That can mean that what I now take in without interpretation I used to interpret. But how does one know that? Or is this something that (according to the person who says that sentence above) just has to be the case? – It seems that a picture, a template, is here forcing itself on us: We were, for instance, impressed by how radically different the ways are in which a thing can be in our world—by the way a slave, a property, can suddenly become a lover for example—and we take that realization to the rest of our experience. It now colors everything. All experience is now like this. Shifting, unstable, up in the air. We feel a bit foreign to our own experience, mistrustful. – But is saying that all experience is like this a result of a real careful inspection, or is it just a template that we are imposing on our experience—a template that no doubt had its moments of usefulness for some experiences? 2.Suppose that we try to use this template for all experience, how useful would that be? One very abstract consideration is that if everything assumes interpretation then the category of interpretation is not clearly useful any longer. Since it now takes up all the space, and does not allow for anything else—anything that is not interpreted (the immediate, the unfiltered). Saying that some experience is an interpretation will as a result be uninformative. One might as well say of a mystery person that they have a nose, or categorize a species of animal by saying that particulars of this species can be alive. It doesn’t help—at least not in any clear way. And so, in what way would it help to say that everything assumes interpretation? 3.Why would someone want to say that everything assumes interpretation? – One reason would be to battle the notion that we are helplessly caught up in the structures of our world. Feeling thus caught can have political consequences. And this is true: we do sometimes take things for granted. We can sometimes be shown that the things we took to be most necessary are not really that essential: “This is not property; it is a human being.” – All that is true. But there is a difference between saying that some things, which we did not take to be interpretations, are interpretations, and therefore that we can change the way we structure our world with regard to some things, and saying that everything is up for change all the time.

4.

Another reason for saying that everything assumes interpretation is to battle the myth of the given: the myth that there are things that don’t have a logical-grammatical identity and structure and connections. Saying that thought cannot begin from an uninterpreted given may be a way of saying that one cannot think illogical thoughts, because there are no such thoughts to think. Thoughts are (essentially) logical things. One cannot think of things that have no logic to them, no meaning; and one would not be able to bring a-logical things into the realm of thought, the realm of logic, by logical means, because those logical means would only be able to touch, interact with, what is already logical. (As only propositions can be premises in a logical inference, and not names for instance.) And so what is being thought, since it is being thought, is already logical—already belongs in the realm of the logical. – Again, all this is true. But there is a difference between saying that everything that has meaning must have a structure (not necessarily be a composite, but have logic—a category, a logical function) and saying that everything has structure as a result of an activity of interpretation. 5.

It seems as though something important will be lost if we thought of everything as assuming interpretation: We would be depriving ourselves of the means to describe the unmediated, the unfiltered, the exposed. Phenomenologically, that is, it would seem odd and uncalled for to get rid of the category of the uninterpreted; that is, it would seem odd to get rid of it as a fundamental category. (This is what some who argue that everything assumes interpretation want to do.) We don’t have just one basic attitude to the world, and to things in it. We have many. The interpretative attitude is one such attitude. Sometimes, alternatively, things just strike us. Their significance dawns on us or forces itself on us without any work on our part. The attitude in such cases is not what would be comfortably described as "interpretative," for the reflection, the standing back, the pensiveness, are not there. ("My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.") – “But I could have interpreted it differently; I could have a different attitude!” – Perhaps you could. But does that necessitate that you interpreted it in the first place?